1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet ink which has a high image density, is excellent in ozone fastness, and has high sticking recovery property and high storage stability. The present invention also relates to an ink set, an ink jet recording method, an ink cartridge, a recording unit, and an ink jet recording apparatus each using the ink as a black ink.
2. Related Background Art
An ink jet recording method is a recording method of applying a small ink droplet to any one of recording media such as plain paper or glossy media to form an image, and has become rapidly widespread owing to reduction in its costs and improvement in recording rate. With the rapid spread of digital cameras in addition to improvement in the quality of images recorded by the method, the method has been generally used as a method of outputting photographic images comparable to silver halide photographs.
In recent years, image quality has undergone an improvement more than ever owing to, for example, an extreme reduction in size of an ink droplet and an improvement of the color gamut involved in the introduction of multi-color ink. Meanwhile, there have been growing demands for a coloring material and ink, so that more stringent properties have been required in terms of an improvement of color developability and reliability such as sticking property or ejection stability (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-290552).